The Indian government has launched an ambitious four-fold manifesto to address challenges in the energy, agriculture, city making and water sectors. Based on the Indian tricolour, these are termed as the white, green, orange and blue revolutions. Of these, the blue revolution is oriented towards national level challenges that include river linking, cleaning of rivers and water conservation. With the intent to address the many challenges of water infrastructure, the manifesto is expected to bring together several disciplines like research, technology and design. Being as yet early days of the Blue revolution, it would be interesting for the landscape fraternity to examine the various opportunities and scales of engagement. It is a critical juncture that could well determine the extent to which the profession will proactively create positive benchmarks in a leadership role. It is important that the landscape architect’s role as a steward of sustainable processes to effectively address human habitat, culture, people and engineering is examined, deliberated upon and clarified.

 

With this background, the Indian Society of Landscape Architects (ISOLA), Bangalore Chapter take this opportunity to structure the Annual Conference of 2016 on Water and Society. The conference is positioned to deliberate on water and its multi-dimensional roles in planning, development and design. The central idea is to critically examine the multiple facets of water as the determinant for interventions at all scales. Rather than examine each facet through a particular lens, the intention is to identify the congruence of issues, challenges and solutions at varying scales and across geographies. Some of the key questions the conference hopes to address include:

 

• How can the profession better define issues, objectives and outcome of the Blue revolution?

• What are the critical knowledge and process gaps that exist in the current development scenario that the profession can help bridge effectively?

• How does one evaluate water not only as an economical and environmental resource, but as a critical paradigm of development process

 

Read here for more on THEME of the conference.